Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314 Detailed modeling of an isolated, ethanol droplet combustion under microgravity conditions Andrei Kazakov, Jordan Conley, Frederick L. Dryer* Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA Received 11 April 2001; received in revised form 29 March 2003; accepted 3 April 2003 Abstract Simulations of ethanol droplet combustion in microgravity have been conducted using a transient, finite-element, reactive flow model that includes a detailed description of gas-phase chemical kinetics and transport as well as non-luminous radiation. The results of the simulations are compared with a wide range of experimental data available in the literature. The experimental targets included ground-based, suspended droplet experiments, drop-tower experiments, and space-based experiments from the Fiber-Supported Droplet Combustion-2 project. The presented model is shown to reproduce closely nearly all aspects of ethanol droplet burning phenomena, such as droplet burning history, average burning rates, radiative extinction behavior, and kinetics of water accumu-lation in the liquid phase. Both the experimental and computational results reported in
Transcript
Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
Detailed modeling of an isolated, ethanol droplet combustion under microgravity conditions
Andrei Kazakov, Jordan Conley, Frederick L. Dryer*
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA
Received 11 April 2001; received in revised form 29 March 2003; accepted 3 April 2003
Understanding the liquid-ethanol combustion pro-cess has significant industrial and fundamental impli-cations. Ethanol has been considered as a motor fuel since the early days of automobiles. In recent years, the use of ethanol as a fuel additive has been stimu-lated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 [1,2], which require utilization of re-formulated and oxygenated gasoline to reduce carbon monoxide and volatile organic compound emissions. Ethanol cur-rently contributes 1% of the total highway fuel market in the United States [3]. Until recently, the primary component in oxygenated fuels was methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). However, it has been
reported to contaminate groundwater, which subse-quently has led to strong interest in banning the usage of MTBE. With the phase-out of MTBE, ethanol remains one of the most favorable oxygenate addi-tives. In addition to the conventional internal com-bustion engine applications, there are possibilities of ethanol usage in fuel cells, both as feed-stock for on-and off-road hydrogen re-formers and as a direct fuel with specially-developed, high-temperature polymer electrolytes [3]. Unlike gasoline, ethanol is produced from bio-mass, a renewable energy source. In addi-tion, while the applications of fuel ethanol are mainly focused on the environmental aspects, ethanol also improves fuel octane number and can serve as a gasoline extender.
From a fundamental point of view, ethanol repre-sents one of the simplest liquid fuels, with properties similar to those of practical liquid fuel blends. Addi-tionally, its gas-phase oxidation chemistry is rela-tively simple and has been extensively studied [4-9].
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These factors make ethanol a valuable target for fundamental droplet combustion studies and model validation that can ultimately lead to a better under-standing of practical liquid fuel combustion pro-cesses. Liquid ethanol is also readily soluble in water, and, similar to methanol [10-13], is able to absorb water vapor from the gas phase. Ethanol-water mix-tures are known to exhibit a non-ideal (azeotropic) behavior, a property of potential interest to liquid hazardous waste incineration applications [14,15]. Finally, ethanol has unusual sooting characteristics that have not received much attention in the litera-ture. As an oxygenate, ethanol is considered to be essentially a non-sooting fuel at normal conditions. At elevated pressures (starting from as low as 2 atm of air), however, an ethanol droplet flame has been shown to form soot profusely [16]. Therefore, etha-nol can also be used for studying sooting phenomena in general and the effect of pressure on soot forma-tion during droplet combustion in particular.
One of the first quantitative data sets describing the burning of an isolated, ethanol droplet was re-ported in the classic work of Godsave [17]. Later, Kumagai and co-workers [18,19] performed the first microgravity ethanol droplet combustion experi-ments using drop-tower facilities. Droplet burning histories, average burning rates, and flame diameters were reported for isolated, ethanol droplets burning in air at 1 atm. Initial droplet diameters covered the range of 0.7–1.7 mm, and the observation time was 1 s. Lee and Law [12] studied combustion of small ( 200 m), free-falling methanol and ethanol drop-lets. The experiments were carried out in the post-combustion region of a laminar flat flame at temper-atures of 1050 K. The authors reported droplet burning histories and time-resolved, integral, liquid-phase water mass fractions. Based on the analysis of their data, Lee and Law concluded that the effect of gas-phase water condensation on ethanol gasification was smaller compared to that of methanol. Colanto-nio and Nayagam [20] measured
radiative emission during microgravity droplet combustion using the NASA 2.2 s drop-tower facilities. Their experiments were conducted with methanol, ethanol, and n-hep-tane droplets burning in air at 1 atm. The radiative-emission intensities of the burning droplets were re-corded with two wide-angle radiometers. Due to the limited zero-gravity time available, only initial parts of the burning history for two large (2.5 and 2.65 mm) ethanol droplets were obtained.
The number of modeling studies that have specif-ically considered isolated, ethanol-droplet combus-tion is rather limited. Puri and Libby [21] presented a numerical model for steady-state, one-dimensional, droplet combustion with a special emphasis on an accurate description of the gas-phase transport pro-
cesses. Gas-phase chemistry was described with an infinitely fast, single-step reaction leading to the equilibrium composition of water-gas products, CO,
CO2, H2, and H2O. The authors performed calcula-tions for several liquid fuels, including ethanol. The predicted burning rates for an ethanol droplet were in very good agreement with the experimental data of Kumagai and co-workers [18]. More recently, Filho [22] reported a simplified, analytical, steady-state, droplet-burning model that accounted for the temper-ature dependence of the molecular transport coeffi-cients and non-unity Lewis numbers. Again, the re-sults for several fuels inclusive of ethanol were reported. The agreement with the experimental data of Kumagai and co-workers [18,19] was shown to be rather poor, and the author attributed it to over-esti-mation of flame temperatures caused by a simplified description of gas-phase combustion kinetics. It should be emphasized, however, that neither of these modeling studies considered the effects associated with gas-phase radiative heat transfer and water con-densation on the droplet surface, important issues identified in the modeling work reported here.
2. Experimental
Microgravity ethanol droplet combustion experi-ments have recently been performed aboard the STS-94/MSL-1 Shuttle mission within the Fiber-Sup-ported Droplet Combustion-2 (FSDC-2) program [24]. This paper presents the first summary of all of the FSDC-2 experiments performed using ethanol and an ethanol-4% water mixture as fuels.
All experiments were carried out in the Glovebox (MGBX) facility using the FSDC-2 experimental ap-paratus. Liquid fuel was contained in modified, air-tight, commercial syringe cartridges. To operate the experiment, the fuel cartridge was screwed into the base of the experiment module. The crew turned a plunger screw, forcing fuel through two opposed, hypodermic needles to the deployment site on a sil-icon fiber
located between the needles and perpen-dicular to them. After the fuel coalesced into a drop-let of the desired size, the needles were slowly retracted to minimize contact of the liquid with the needle surfaces. The stretched droplet was then de-ployed by rapidly retracting the needles into the bot-tom of the chamber. Motions of the deployed droplet were allowed to dampen before the igniter was ener-gized. Actuation of the igniter system lifted a replace-able hot igniter into place on one side of the droplet (parallel to the fiber), approximately 3.5 mm from the fiber, and simultaneously provided electric current to the igniter. When the crew operator detected ignition visually, the igniter button was released, automati-
A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314 303
cally retracting the igniter wire assembly to the bot-tom of the test chamber. Imaging data were provided by two video views, a back-lit view of the droplet and, a perpendicular view of the flame. The video camera for the droplet view was attached to the Glovebox microscope. The second video camera, with a view essentially orthogonal to the microscope, recorded the droplet, the fiber, and the flame. All of the data were recorded using three 8-mm VCRs.
The taped camera images were analyzed in this laboratory using microcomputer-based imaging anal-ysis systems. The data-reduction techniques that were utilized have been described elsewhere by Struk et al. [24]. Each droplet-combustion test occurred at pressures of 0.996 –1.107 bar, oxygen mole fraction 0.204 – 0.222, and relative humidity of 39 to 46% of the SpaceLab environment. Both pure ethanol and 96% ethanol-4% water droplets were studied; the initial droplet diameter ranged from 2.5 to 6 mm.
3. Droplet-combustion model
The numerical modeling of spherically-symmet-ric, liquid droplet combustion was performed by solving the following gas-phase conservation equa-tions of mass, species, and energy:
g 1 r2 g g02
t r rY
g,iY
g,i 1g g g r2 gVr,i˙ g,i
t r r2
r
Tg Tg 1 T
gC
p,g gC
p,g g r2 gt r r2 r rn
Tgn
gYg,iVr,iCp,g,i ˙ g,iHg,i· qRri 1 i 1
l 1 r2 l l02t r r
Yl,i
Yl,i 1
r2Dl
Yl,i
0l l lt r r2 r r
lC
p,l
Tl
lC
p,l l
Tl
1
r2 l
Tl
t r r2 r r
where Yl,i is the mass fraction of the i-th species in the liquid phase, and vl, Dl, l, Cp,l, Tl, and l the flow velocity, effective diffusion coefficient, mass density,constant-pressure heat capacity, temperature, and thermal conductivity, respectively, of the liquid phase.
The boundary conditions included application of zero gradients in the center of the droplet,Y
l,i Tl
r 0 0, r 0 0r r
and gas ambient conditions at r,
Yg,i r
Yg,i T r T ,
where Yg,i is the mass fraction of the i-th species in the ambient environment, and T the temperature ofthe ambient environment. In addition to the boundary conditions at r 0 and r , the temperature continuity and conservation of mass and energy across the liquid-gas interface were considered:
TgT
l r rp Ts (9)
drp
lg l
g
r rp (10)dt lY
l,i g
Dl gl
Yl,iir rp 0 (11)r l
Tl Tgnl
l g g gliLi qR r rp
r r i 1
(3)
where t is the time; r the radial coordinate; g, Tg, Cp,g, and g the density, temperature, constant-pres-sure heat capacity, and thermal conductivity, respec-tively, of the gas mixture; vg the radial fluid velocity;Yg,i, Vr,i, ˙ g,i, Cp,g,i, and Hg,i the mass fraction, dif-fusion velocity, gas-phase mass-production rate, con-stant-pressure heat capacity, and enthalpy, respec-tively, of the i-th gaseous species; and n the number of gaseous species. The term qR appearing in Eq. 3 is the heat flux due to the non-luminous radiative heat transfer.
In the liquid phase, the following equations were applied:
0, (12)
where rp is the droplet radius, Li the latent heat of the i-th species in the liquid phase, and i the fractional gasification rate of the i-th species in the liquid phase, defined as
i m˙ . (13)n
l
m
˙
i
i
1
In Eqs. 12 and 13, m˙ is the total mass-gasification rate, m˙ i the mass gasification rate of the i-th species in the liquid phase, and nl the number of species in the liquid phase equal to 2 (i.e., ethanol and water) in
304 A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
the present study. Besides the main liquid compo-nent, ethanol, the presence of water in the liquid phase was also considered, both as an initial liquid-mixture component and as an absorbed gas-phase combustion product. The system of Eqs. 1 through 12 is closed with the ideal-gas equation of state, along
with the density l l (Yl, Tl), and equilibrium vapor-pressure correlations for non-ideal ethanol-wa-ter liquid mixtures. Detailed gas-phase kinetics of ethanol oxidation was described with the reaction mechanism of Norton and Dryer [7], which consists of 142 reversible reactions of 33 species. As will be discussed in the next section, the predicted droplet-flame structure and the burning history were rela-tively insensitive to the existing uncertainties in the gas-phase chemistry. The gas-phase-diffusion and heat-conduction terms in Eqs. 2 and 3 were evaluated using TRANLIB [31], and the properties for the transport-data calculation were taken from the Sandia database [31] and the compilation of Reid et al. [32]. The vapor pressure at the surface of a bi-component ethanol-water droplet was calculated using the vapor-pressure data for the individual compounds and the standard NTRL correlation for ethanol-water mix-tures [32] from Kurihara and co-workers [33]. The temperature-dependent latent heats for ethanol and water were taken from Daubert and Danner [34], and the mixture liquid density appearing in Eqs. 4 through 6 was computed from the correlations for pure compounds [34] and the excess-volume equa-tion of Bai et al. [35]. Droplet ignition was initiated by imposing the gas-phase temperature profile, which approximated a thermal ignition source, similar to the one used previously [13,29]. Equations 1 through 6, along with the boundary conditions 7 to 12, were solved with the transient, moving-mesh, finite ele-ment code described in detail by Cho et al. [25]. This approach has been successfully applied previously to the problems of methanol and methanol-water [13,26 –28], n-heptane, and n-heptane-n-hexadecane [29 –30] droplet combustion. All computations were performed on a Pentium III-class Linux workstation.
4. Treatment of non-luminous radiation
In the majority of the previous liquid- and solid-particle combustion modeling efforts [36 –38] that have attempted to include radiative heat transfer, the sphero-symmetric formulation presented by Viskanta and Merriam [39] has been utilized. Viskanta and Merriam offered a set of analytical equations ex-pressing the radiative heat-transfer rate terms as func-tions of local temperature and gas optical thickness,
r r pd , where p is the Plank-
mean coeffi-0
cient. While most of the studies based on Viskanta and Merriam [39] also relied on the assumption of the spatially-uniform p, the original description [40] was somewhat unclear on whether this assumption is required for the use of their formulation. During the course of the present study, we have re-examined the original source of the formulation by Viskanta and Merriam, an early analytical development by Kuznetsov [40]. First, we have confirmed that the formulation of Viskanta and Merriam [39] is indeed an approximation valid only for the constant p and therefore cannot be used for the general case when p varies with the radial distance r. Next, after re-eval-uation of Kuznetsov’s work and elimination of sev-eral typographical errors in his publication, we have arrived at a set of exact, analytical equations appli-cable to the general case of the arbitrary radial dis-tribution of the Plank-mean coefficient. The resulting equations describing the divergence of the radiative heat flux, · qr in Eq. 3, are given below:
1·
q
R r2 r r2qR
4 ˜ 4
r g1 g2 2 B p r Ts 2Twhere
1
g1 exp
1 r˜ 2
r˜
˜ p u2 r˜2 12 du d
1 r˜2 12
1 ˜ 4g
2r˜ K r˜, ˜ ˜ T ˜ ˜ p ˜ d ˜ ,1
r˜2 1 ˜ 2 1
K r˜ , ˜r˜ ˜
r˜2 ˜ 2 z2
2z 2
exp r˜2 ˜ 2 z2 ˜ p u r˜, ˜ ,z2z
r˜, ˜ ,z
r˜ ˜ z r˜ ˜ z r˜ ˜ z r˜ ˜ z
,4z2
(18)
˜ Tg /Ts, ˜ pB is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, T
prp, and r˜r /rp.
A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314 305
The first term in Eq. 14 is associated with the heat considered a radial convective liquid-flow velocityloss due to radiation, and the g1 and g2 terms repre- component in the governing equations solely for thesent the re-absorption of radiation from the particle purposes of assessing the importance of the effectssurface and the gas-phase, respectively. Clearly, the associated with changes in the local liquid-phase den-radiation from the droplet surface, i.e., the g1 term, is sity. From Eq. 10, the effective burning rate, Kb, hasnot important for the present study, since the droplet- contributions from two sources,surface temperature is relatively low. As is pointed
d dp2 drpout in the original formulation [40], the kernel func-
Kb 8rp K1 K2, (20)tion K(r˜, ˜) in Eq. 17 is symmetric, i.e., K(r˜, ˜) dt dtK( ˜,r˜). Therefore, when evaluated on a discrete
whered
p is the droplet diameter,K
1mesh, K(r˜, ˜) needs to be calculated only for about a 8r
p l r rp describes the droplet-size change duehalf of the possible (r˜, ˜) combinations.
Similarly, the contribution of radiation to the en- to variations in liquid-phase density, and K2
gergy balance on the droplet surface in Eq. 12 is given 8rp g l r rp is associated with the actualby l
2
liquid-mass gasification. Following Eq. 4, the expres-sion for K1 can be rewritten as
4 ˜ 4q
R r rpBT
s 1 ˜ p ˜ ˜ T ˜˜ d ˜ ,8
rp
l1 K1 dr(19)
lrp t0
where8 rp l Tl nl
rp l Yl,i
dr dr ,˜ lr
p Tl tY
l,i t˜ 0 i 1 0
(21)˜ 2 1
z distinguishing the contributions due to the changes in˜ p duexp u2˜ 2 z2 dz. local liquid-phase temperature (thermal contraction/
expansion) and in composition (due to water disso-z2 ˜ 2 1
While Eqs. 14 and 19 involve two-dimensional inte-lution in the liquid phase in the case of ethanoldroplet). To clarify the importance of the effects
gration, these integrals are well-defined and can beassociated with changes in liquid-phase density, a
evaluated efficiently, as opposed to the use of costlyseries of model exercises were carried out. Figure 1
discretizations needed for the direct solution of thecompares the results of two test calculations for a
radiative-transfer equation with a discrete ordinate3-mm ethanol droplet burning in air at 1 atm. In the
method [41]. It is also worthwhile to point out that,first case, the computations were performed using the
although it was not attempted in the present study,complete set of equations presented in the previous
Eqs. 14 through 19 can be trivially extended to ac-sections. In the second case, vl was set to zero in thecount for non-gray effects using, e.g., the spectral-corresponding equations while retaining the func-
line-weighted sum of the gray-gases model [42]. Thetional dependencies of the liquid-phase density on
local values of p in the present calculations were local temperature and composition. Shown on the topcomputed from the individual contributions of CO,
panel of Fig. 1 is the comparison of evolution ofCO2, and H2O, as reported by Marchese and Dryer
normalized, droplet diameter-squared and the instan- [28].
taneous burning rate. It is clear that the results areaffected by variations in liquid density. These effects,however, are primarily confined to the duration of the
5. The effect of variations in liquid-phase density initial droplet heat-up when an increase in dropletdiameter due to thermal expansion results in large
As can be seen, Eqs. 4 through 6 include convec- negative values of Kb. After the initial heat-up periodtive terms associated with the liquid flow-velocity, vl. is over, the contribution of K1 to the total effectiveA rigorous multi-dimensional treatment of liquid- burning rate approaches zero and becomes much lessphase flow was not attempted in the present work, important than that from the actual liquid-gasificationand, as will be discussed in the next section, liquid- rate, K2. The contribution of K1 becomes competitivephase flow effects on liquid mass and thermal trans- again (but to a lesser extent) only around the point ofport were accounted for via effective, empirical, extinction, when the gasification rate ceases, while antransport corrections. In the present section, we also increase in liquid-water content and subsequent cool-
306 A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
Fig. 1. Model predictions for a 3-mm ethanol droplet burn-ing in air at 1 atm, illustrating the effect of variations in liquid-phase density. Top panel: evolution of droplet diam-eter-squared and instantaneous burning rate; bottom panel: instantaneous burning rate and integrated liquid-water mass-fraction plotted as
functions of the extent of burning, 1 (d/d0)2. Solid lines represent computations based on the full system of Eqs. 1 through 12; dotted
lines correspond to the solution with vl set to zero (see text).
ing both result in droplet contraction,
as evidenced by a small peak on K1
curve (Fig. 1, top panel). The latter, however, does not cause significant changes in the predicted droplet size at extinction (extinction diameter); the observed difference between the two cases is within 6%. More importantly, because the effects associated with liquid-density changes are confined to a very short initial period in the overall droplet-time history, they can be essentially compen-sated for by shifting one of the curves in time. In other words, when plotted against the “extent of burning” coordinate, 1
(d/d0)2, the burning-rate curves nearly
match with the difference within 2%
during most of the burning history (Fig. 1, bottom panel). The curves showing the evolution of total water mass-fraction accumulated in the liquid phase (another important characteristic of the ethanol-drop-let burning process that will be discussed in detail in the next section) also coincide for two cases.
One can draw an important conclusion from the above analysis. First, it suggests that once robust
droplet burning is established, it has very little “mem-ory” of the initial transient, heat-up period (as long as the ignition energy does not over-drive the process). In all FSDC microgravity droplet-combustion exper-iments, ignition is initiated by a non-symmetric source, and spherical symmetry is not established until a short time later in the process. However, the numerical test presented here supports the idea that experimental burning histories can still be compared with uni-dimensional-model results by matching the quasi-linear parts of the curves, and detailed resolu-tion of the initial heat-up period is not required. Second, the presence of
vl terms in the governing equations does not affect significantly the model re-sults relevant to the present study. Consequently, these terms were ignored in the following analysis (to reduce numerical stiffness).
6. Treatment of liquid transport
The extent of water absorption and its effect on both the quasi-steady burning rate and flame-extinc-tion phenomena are strongly influenced by liquid mass-transport [13,43]. The liquid mass Peclet num-ber,
drp
1d dp
2
Pel,m rp
dt dt 1Kb,Dl 8 Dl 8 Dl
is normally used to characterize the effects of the liquid-phase transport. If the liquid mass Peclet num-ber is low, the condensed water is preferentially transferred into the droplet interior, resulting in a higher degree of water accumulation in the liquid phase. If, on the other hand, the Peclet number is high, only a thin, surface boundary layer containing water is formed, without significant water penetration into the droplet interior. Consequently very little wa-ter accumulates in the liquid phase over the droplet-burning time. In the
calculations, the burning rate Kb is obtained as part of the solution, but the
“effective liquid diffusivity”, Dl, has to be provided as the model input parameter. In the absence of internal liquid motion, the liquid transport is
controlled by molecular diffusion, and the value of molecular dif-fusivity of
water in ethanol appears to be 1 10 5
mm2 s 1 [44]. Based on the data that will be reported in the following sections, this
value of Dl would
correspond to Pel,m of 5 103 for a 3-mm ethanol droplet burning with an average Kb of 0.4 mm2
s 1. This, in turn, would imply a high-Peclet-number regime, or the diffusion limit [45], with very little water accumulation in the liquid phase. However, the available experimental evidence [11,12], as well as
A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314 307
extensive asymptotic [45] and numerical [13] analy-sis of methanol droplet combustion, has suggested that the transport of water in the liquid phase is characterized by the low Peclet number regime (con-vection, or well-mixed, limit [45]). The enhancement of flow motion in the droplet interior originates from a number of sources, including interfacial effects between liquid and gas phases (thermal and solutal Marangoni effects [46 – 49]), interaction between needles and the droplet during deployment, droplet motions relative to the local gas-phase environment, and the presence of gaseous bubbles within the liquid interior as a result of droplet growth and deployment. Under combustion conditions, tethering filaments and the associated interfacial surface tension effects can also induce significant internal circulation. Con-sidering physical and chemical similarities between ethanol and methanol as well as the fact that the same method of droplet generation and deployment was used for both ethanol and previously analyzed meth-anol [27] droplets in the FSDC-2 program, it is rea-sonable to expect similar convective enhancement of diffusive liquid-transport by internal liquid-phase motions in the case of ethanol droplets. Furthermore, inspection of video records from the FSDC-2 pro-gram shows rapid bubble circulation inside burning ethanol droplets, thus providing additional, direct ev-idence of internal liquid motion. In the previous methanol droplet combustion modeling studies [13,27,28], the effective liquid diffusivity was empir-ically increased to address the effect of internal liquid motion. The detailed discussion justifying this ap-proach is given by Marchese and Dryer [13]. In the present study, we have followed the same approach, and the value of the effective
liquid diffusivity Dl for the baseline simulations was assigned by analogy with the previously studied methanol cases [13,27]. It is important to emphasize, however, that the effective liquid diffusivity is the only empirical parameter in the present study; the rest of the model remains as detailed and uncompromised as possible, with no
other parameters treated as adjustable quantities.
To elucidate the choice of Dl
adopted in the present study, a number of parametric sensitivity cal-culations were performed, as discussed below. Figure 2 shows the model predictions for a 3-mm ethanol droplet burning in air at 1 atm. Inspection of this figure indicates that the present baseline choice of Dl corresponding to Pel,m 0.6 results in a near “con-vection limit” of droplet burning, and a further de-crease of Pel,m does not have a significant effect on the droplet-burning history or water accumulation in the liquid phase. As can also be seen in Fig. 2, the uncertainty in Pel,m within a factor of 2 of the base-line case does not affect the predicted droplet-burn-ing history, resulting in virtually the same burning
Fig. 2. Model predictions for a 3-mm ethanol droplet burn-ing in air at 1 atm, illustrating the effect of liquid-mass Peclet number. Top panel: evolution of droplet diameter-squared and instantaneous burning rate; bottom panel: inte-grated liquid-water mass-fraction.
rate and extinction diameter. An increase
of Pel,m by an order of magnitude, on the other hand, initiates transition to “diffusion limit” burning, drastically re-ducing the rate of water dissolution. At
Pel,m 18, the system approaches the result when water conden-sation is turned off completely in the simulation. The results presented in Fig. 2 also exhibit an interesting feature, namely, there appears to be an acceleration of droplet burning (increase in the burning rate) at the end of the process for the cases with little or no water absorption (high liquid-mass Peclet numbers). This behavior is caused by the fact that the chosen initial droplet diameter is relatively large, and the radiative heat losses, being a strong function of the droplet size [28], contribute significantly in the beginning of the process. With liquid-fuel consumption, the droplet size becomes smaller and the influence of radiation
decreases, resulting in accelerated burning. This phe-nomenon is not
observed for the high-Pel,m cases, since the burning acceleration is hindered by increas-ing water content in the liquid phase.
To further illustrate the choice of effective Dl, a number of model runs were performed at the condi-
308 A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
Fig. 3. Model predictions (lines) and experimental data of Lee and Law [12] (symbols) for a 226- m ethanol droplet burning in the environment of post-
combustion products of CH4/O2/N2 laminar, pre-mixed flame at 1050 K. Top panel: evolution of droplet diameter-squared; bottom panel: inte-grated liquid-water mass-fraction.
tions studied experimentally by Lee and Law [12]. As was mentioned in the Introduction, Lee and Law investigated droplet burning and temporal liquid-wa-ter accumulation in the post-combustion gases of a laminar premixed flame. Figure 3 displays the com-parison of their experimental data and the present model predictions for the case of a “wet” environ-ment, i.e., when water vapor was present in the am-bient atmosphere as one of the combustion products of a CH4/O2/N2
laminar, premixed flame. As shown in the top panel of Fig. 3, the evolution of diameter-squared with time is well reproduced in the simula-tions. It is also clear that the burning history is not very sensitive to the Pel,m for the entire range of experimental
observations. Shown on the bottom panel of Fig. 3 is the comparison of the computed liquid-water mass fraction with the experimental measurements. As can be seen, the baseline choice of Dl, which
corresponds to Pel,m 1.1 for this case of
Kb 0.8 mm2 s 1, agrees reasonably well with the experimental results. A further decrease of Pel,m shows only moderate improvement of the agreement,
Fig. 4. Vapor pressure of liquid components of ethanol/ water mixture as a function of ethanol mole-fraction in the liquid phase, computed at 340 K [33].
and the predicted changes are likely to be less than the uncertainties in the estimated ambient conditions (gas-phase composition and the temperature) and the actual experimental measurements. An increase of Pel,m toward the diffusion limit, on the other hand, leads to the drastic departure of the model predictions from the experimental data. Therefore, it can con-cluded that the results of Lee and Law also support the low-Pel,m-regime of droplet burning, indicating that in these experiments, substantial internal liquid-phase motions existed.
An important observation that can be made based on the computational results presented in Fig. 2 is that the rate of water accumulation in the liquid phase is substantially smaller for the ethanol droplets as compared to the previously-studied methanol cases [13]. The same conclusion was also reached by Lee and Law [12], based on their experimental results.
As discussed next, detailed analysis of the model predictions indicates that low rates of water accumu-lation in the liquid phase for the ethanol droplets are caused by non-ideal (azeotropic) behavior of liquid ethanol/water mixtures. As was noted previously, ethanol forms an azeotrope with water at 4% of water by mass. This implies that at this composition of ethanol/water liquid
mixture, the total vapor pres-sure of liquid components near the droplet surface goes through a maximum, as opposed to the behavior of ideal mixtures described by Raoult’s law (Fig. 4). Once the level of liquid water at the droplet surface reaches the azeotropic value, further water conden-sation becomes constrained. To illustrate this phe-nomenon, an additional model run was performed where the azeotropic vapor-pressure correlation [32] was replaced with Raoult’s law (Fig. 4) for ideal
A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314 309
Fig. 5. Computed evolution of droplet diameter-squared and instantaneous burning rate (top) and integrated liquid-water mass-fraction and instantaneous water-gasification rate (bottom) for a 1-mm ethanol droplet burning in air at 1 atm. Solid lines represent computations based on azeotropic cor-relations [33]; dotted lines are based on Raoult’s law.
mixtures. Figure 4 displays the comparison of the results from this test run and the baseline model calculations for combustion of a 1-mm ethanol drop-let in air (1 atm). The apparent burning history and the evolution of the instantaneous burning rate shown on the top panel of Fig. 5 are very close for both cases during most of the burning duration. Near the com-pletion of combustion, however, the calculations based on Raoult’s law show significant
deviations from the d2 law, followed by earlier extinction with a much larger extinction diameter as compared to the baseline case. This behavior is very typical of the extinction phenomenon caused by water accumula-tion in the liquid phase [13]. Indeed, as can be seen on the bottom panel of Fig. 5, the calculations based on Raoult’s law
exhibit a larger water-condensation rate (i.e., smaller water fractional-gasification rates) and result in greater liquid-water mass-fraction.
As was mentioned above, the FSDC-2 experi-ments involved both pure ethanol and 96% etha-nol-4% water mixture droplets. Figure 6 shows the comparison of the model results obtained for the cases of 1- and 3-mm initial droplet sizes with both pure ethanol and ethanol-4% water mixtures. Al-
Fig. 6. Computed evolution of droplet diameter-squared and instantaneous burning rate (top) and integrated liquid-water mass-fraction (bottom) for pure ethanol and 96% etha-nol-4% water droplets.
though the 4% water addition to the initial droplet has a noticeable effect on droplet-burning behavior, the changes in the main observables are relatively small for both droplet sizes, i.e., the observed average burn-ing rate decreased by 2%, and the extinction diam-eter increased by 20%. As will be shown in the following sections, these differences appear to be well within the experimental scatter of the FSDC-2 data, and therefore, pure ethanol and ethanol-4% wa-ter data can essentially be used collectively.
7. Uncertainties in gas-phase chemistry
To elucidate the influence of the existing uncer-tainties in the gas-phase reaction chemistry, the model predictions based on the reaction mechanism of Norton and Dryer [7],
the baseline of the present study, were compared with the results obtained using another recently published reaction set [8]. The re-sults of this comparison are presented in Fig. 7 for a 1-mm ethanol droplet burning in air (1 atm). As
310 A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
certainly be necessary for future efforts in which we plan to incorporate soot-precursor kinetics and a soot-formation sub-model.
Fig. 7. Comparison of model predictions based on the reac-tion mechanism of Norton and Dryer [7] (solid lines) and Marinov [8] (dotted lines) for a 1-mm ethanol droplet burn-ing in air at 1 atm. Top panel: evolution of droplet diameter-squared and instantaneous burning rate; bottom panel: flame structure at 0.47 s after ignition.
shown on the bottom panel of Fig. 7, the predicted flame structures appear to be very similar. The pre-dicted maximum flame temperatures at 0.47 s after ignition differ by about 27 K. The main differences appear to be for water, carbon monoxide, and hydro-gen profiles in the pyrolysis region of the flame, which are caused by the additional uni-molecular decomposition pathways included in the mechanism of Marinov [8]. The model based on this mechanism also displays a slightly higher degree of water accu-mulation (Fig. 7, top panel) due to greater water concentrations near the droplet surface. Nonetheless, as can be seen from the predicted burning-rate pro-files, the observed variations do not have a significant effect on droplet-burning history and extinction be-havior. On the other hand, the mechanism of Norton and Dryer has been shown to yield better agreement with species measurements in an atmospheric flow-reactor [7] and is more compact than the reaction set of Marinov, which contains 383 reactions of 57 spe-cies. The Norton and Dryer mechanism [7] was there-fore chosen as a baseline throughout the present study. Further refinement of the kinetics [9] will
8. Results
8.1. Burning histories
Due to the high cost of space-based experiments, the FSDC-2 data were restricted to the relatively large initial droplet sizes starting from 2 mm for which the burning histories cannot be followed in full using the drop-tower facilities on the ground. Here, the drop-tower data of Kumagai and co-workers [18,19] were used for smaller droplet comparison. Figure 8 shows the comparison of model predictions and the experimental data for the burning histories with the initial droplet sizes ranging from 1 to 6 mm. As can be seen, the model shows an overall good agreement with the experiments. For the small, unsupported droplet results [19] shown on the top panel of Fig. 8, the model closely follows the exper-imental points during the entire observation time. The FSDC-2 data for intermediate-size droplets (2.79 and 3.41 mm) depart from the model predictions during the late parts of burning histories. The inspection of experimental curves and the original video record-ings indicated that during the periods in question, the droplets were engaged in oscillatory motion along the supporting fiber. This motion likely induced a forced convective flow around the droplet, enhancing the droplet-burning rates [50]. Shown on the bottom panel of Fig. 8 are the data for
the largest droplet experiment conducted in FSDC-2 (d0
5.8 mm). The experiment exhibited an early extinction, with very little change in diameter. (Note that for empha-sis, the bottom panel is scaled differently from the rest of the Fig. 8.) As can be seen, the model captures the observed behavior.
8.2. Average burning rates
The average droplet-burning rates are compiled in Fig. 9 as a function of the initial droplet size. For consistency with the experimental definition, the model-predicted, average burning rates were ob-tained from the linear fits to the computed evolution
of d2 with time. Clearly, the experimental data ex-hibit relatively large scatter. Nonetheless, the model appears to provide a good description of the data, both in terms of the general trend and quantitative agreement. As will be discussed in the following sub-sections, the observed decrease in the average droplet-burning rate is mainly caused by the influ-ence of non-luminous, radiative heat losses that be-
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Fig. 8. Comparison of the model predictions (lines) with the experimental data (symbols) for the evolution of droplet diameter-squared for the ethanol droplets of different sizes. Symbols on the top panel are the experimental results of Hara and Kumagai [19]; all other data are from the FSDC-2 data set [23].
come more pronounced at larger droplet sizes [28]. The predictions of simplified, steady-state models [21,22] are also shown in Fig. 9. Since neither of these models includes radiative heat losses, their pre-dicted burning rates are independent of the initial droplet size.
8.3. Flame diameters
The flame diameters in the FSDC-2 experiments were determined from the visual observations of flame
intersections with the supporting filament. The obtained information is rather limited, due to the difficulties caused by the weak, visible luminosity of ethanol flames, and consequently is subject to large uncertainties. The evolution of normalized flame di-
Fig. 9. Variation in average burning rate with initial droplet size for ethanol and ethanol/water droplets burning in air at 1 atm.
ameter (flame stand-off ratio) for the 2.9-mm ethanol droplet is presented in Fig. 10. Also shown on this figure are the drop-tower data of Hara and Kumagai [19] for a 0.92-mm droplet, as well as the predictions of the present model and the models of Puri and Libby [21] and Filho [22], discussed in the previous section. Throughout the comparisons, the computed flame diameter was defined as the location of the maximum flame temperature. The present detailed, transient model predictions are very close to each other for both droplet sizes and are in a good agree-ment with the FSDC-2 data (i.e., 2.9-mm droplet). In
Fig. 10. Evolution of flame stand-off ratio for the ethanol droplets of different sizes burning in air at 1 atm.
312 A. Kazakov et al. / Combustion and Flame 134 (2003) 301–314
Fig. 11. Droplet extinction diameter as a function of the initial droplet size for ethanol and ethanol/water droplets burning in air at 1 atm.
addition, the fully-transient model also captures the shape of the experimental curve. The data of Hara and Kumagai [19] appear to be below the present model predictions for the corresponding droplet size. It should be pointed out that the flame positions in the experiments of Hara and Kumagai were obtained based on the visible radiation from the images of unsupported burning droplets and are likely to have even greater uncertainty than the FSDC-2 data. The model of Filho [22] significantly over-predicts all the data, which is very typical of simplified, quasi-steady or transient theories. The predictions of Puri and Libby [21] agree very well with the results of Hara and Kumagai [19]; however, their model was cali-brated against these data.
8.4. Extinction behavior
As shown in Fig. 8, larger droplets display early extinction. The extinction diameters obtained for the entire ethanol droplet data set from FSDC-2 are pre-sented in Fig. 11. The model performs very well in reproducing the complex extinction behavior ob-served in the experiments. Analysis of the model predictions indicates that, for the droplets of 3 mm in diameter, extinction is mainly caused by water accumulation in the liquid phase.
However, the pre-dicted extinction diameters are very small (over a factor of 2 less than those observed for the methanol droplets of the same initial size [27]). Such values cannot be fully resolved in the FSDC-2 experiments, because the predicted extinction diameters are of the same order as the size of the ceramic tethering bead (Fig. 11) embedded in the supporting filament to prevent the droplet from sliding along the fiber. As the initial droplet size approaches 4 mm, both the
model and the experimental data follow a sharp, nearly discontinuous increase in the extinction diam-eter, indicative of radiative extinction. At even larger initial droplet sizes, the value of the extinction diam-eter asymptotically approaches the value of the initial droplet diameter, i.e., the limiting situation when no burning takes place.
During the FSDC-2 experiments, some of the large droplets that burned and underwent extinction were subsequently re-ignited. This procedure was repeated until the droplet was fully consumed. Also shown in Fig. 11 is the sequence of re-ignition and extinction events calculated for the largest initial droplet size studied (5.8 mm). The droplet re-ignition was simulated by imposing the gas-phase tempera-ture profile that imitated the igniter wire while retain-ing the liquid- and gas-phase composition produced from the previous burn, followed by extinction and subsequent vaporization periods. As can be seen, the model closely follows the sequence of re-burns re-ported in the experiments. To further illustrate the effect of radiative heat losses on the burning behavior of large droplets, the following numerical test was performed. For the largest droplet (5.8 mm), an ad-ditional model run was carried out, with the radiative heat losses turned off. As a result, no extinction was observed; instead, the burning proceeded at a very high rate close to that of a 1-mm droplet.
Successful prediction of droplet extinction behav-ior due to radiative heat losses demonstrated above gives indirect evidence of the adequacy of the radi-ative heat transfer model used in the present study. To further address this point, the model predictions were compared with the direct measurements
of total radiant emission, Qrad, by Colantonio and Nayagam [20]. Figure 12 displays the experimental data against the model predictions for two ethanol droplets burn-ing in air at 1 atm. The limited observation time in the 2.2-s drop-tower did not permit sufficiently resolved burning histories for relatively large droplets (2.5 and 2.65 mm) considered in the experiments. Therefore, a large portion of the observed burning history may still be affected by three-
dimensional, transient, post-ignition processes that are not accounted for in the uni-dimensional numerical model. The modeling re-sults shown in Fig. 12 indicate that the entire exper-imental observation period resides over times when the initial, radiant-emission changes are responding primarily to the initial, transient, in-flame develop-ment. The burning reaches a quasi-steady
regime when Qrad is approximately at its peak value; after that, radiant emission starts to decline following the decrease of the droplet (and flame) size. Clearly, the model performs reasonably well in capturing the ini-tial increase in total radiant emission and matches very closely the experimental values reported at the
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Fig. 12. Comparison of computed (lines) and measured [21] (symbols) total radiant emissions for the ethanol droplets burning in air at 1 atm.
end of the observation period when three-dimen-sional, post-ignition effects are expected to be mini-mized.
9. Summary
A comprehensive model of ethanol-droplet burn-ing in microgravity is presented and thoroughly val-idated. The model predictions for various droplet-combustion characteristics (burning rate, extinction diameter, flame diameter, liquid-water accumulation, flame radiant emission) are in very good agreement with the experimental data obtained within the FSDC-2 program [23], as well as with other available literature data [12,19,20]. The model supports the observation of Lee and Law [12] that the burning of ethanol droplets is less affected by water-vapor con-densation as compared to the previously studied methanol cases [13]. Analysis of the model predic-tions suggests that azeotropic behavior of ethanol-water mixtures restricts that amount of water that can be absorbed by the droplet. The experimental and numerical results of the present work also suggest that, for ethanol droplets burning in air at 1 atm, the radiative extinction diameter has a value of 4 mm.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by NASA under COOP Nos. NCC3-487 and NCC3-735. We gratefully ac-knowledge the contributions of and collaborations with fellow FSDC-2 team members Forman Wil-liams, Ron Colantonio, Dan Dietrich, John Haggard,
Sue Motil, Vedha Nayagam, and Ben Shaw and fel-low DCE team members Forman Williams and Vedha Nayagam. We also wish to acknowledge the contributions at Princeton University of Anthony Marchese (Rowan University), Paul Michniewicz, and Yolanda Stein in support of the experimental aspects, leading to generation of the experimental data reported here, and to Bradley Urban for contri-butions to data processing facilities here at Princeton University.
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